Page 28

MARGOT

T he taste of burnt chicken rests on my tongue like it was cooked there, charring my taste buds along with it. Every sip of wine I take splashes at the taste like it tries and fails to put out the fire.

Still, I ask for seconds with a smile on my face, and when Arseni delivers it to me—looking strange in a pair of khakis and a red, button-down shirt—I’m quick to dig in.

It’s terrible. It reminds me of my mother’s cooking and all the times my father grumbled on the couch, refusing to eat it.

Twice I can remember him tipping over the pan in the kitchen when it wasn’t to his satisfaction.

“You don’t have to eat it,” Arseni says. He’s said it at least five times throughout this back patio dinner. Even me asking for seconds hasn’t fooled him.

“It’s good.”

He frowns like he isn’t convinced. “I swear to God I followed the instructions.”

I smile and put another piece in my mouth. Chewing keeps me from answering.

He pushes his plate away and runs a hand through his soft, brown hair, looking away from me like he’s nervous.

He’s been like this the entire evening, ever since he came and got me from his room claiming he made dinner for me.

There’s a long stick candle lit in the middle of a white tablecloth that would be romantic if this wasn’t so awkward.

All I can think about is how this is the same table he made me spread myself on for his entertainment, the cold biting into my naked bottom.

I’m sitting in the chair where I burned him.

It’s weird. And reassuring. And confusing as hell.

When I woke up this morning, I felt nauseous about last night.

Arseni was already gone, the weight of his arm around me replaced with a pillow that was soft and disappointing.

I kept thinking he regretted it. That any time today he’d throw me back in my dungeon like it meant nothing.

Like I hadn’t fully opened myself to him, revealing everything inside.

I told him things I wouldn’t write about in a journal. I told him things I wouldn’t tell a shrink. He knows more about me than I’ve admitted to my shower.

Words can’t describe how scared I was that it was all for nothing.

Or how scared I am, now , wondering if I made a mistake.

I feel naked. Exposed. More so than when Arseni strung me up. More than ever in my life.

“So.” He clears his throat. His nerves make my heart flutter. They give away everything that last night meant to him too.

He doesn’t go on. His mouth opens, and he looks like he has something he really wants to say, but it’s lodged in his throat.

“Yes?” I ask.

He closes his mouth and looks away. “Where do you think you’ll go when you leave here?” He turns back to me, but I’m certain that wasn’t what he was going to say.

I shrug, my pulse jumping just thinking about it. “I don’t know.”

I don’t want to even think about it.

“The cops probably?—”

“You know what I was thinking about today?”

He closes his mouth to let me go on.

“I was thinking about how you know every dirty secret about me, but I don’t know any of yours.”

He scratches the back of his head while considering that. “Uh, yeah you kinda do.”

“Like what?” I pick up my wine glass. I’m amazed at how relaxed my voice sounds. At the fact that I don’t spill my wine. It doesn’t even slosh around, despite my sweaty hand making the glass feel slick.

“Well, like I’m a soldier in the Russian mob, for one.”

I let out a soft chuckle. “As if all Las Vegas’s finest don’t know that as well.”

Laying his hands on his chair’s armrest, he shrugs. “What do you want to know?”

Everything .

Something .

Anything to make me feel less humiliated at my own confessions.

I take another sip of wine while I try to think of how to respond without him seeing how desperate I am. How horribly self-conscious.

His words from last night come back to me like a breath to the back of my neck, raising the hairs.

I do not give a shit about your age.

I do not give a shit who you’ve fucked or how old they were when you fucked them.

I don’t care that you were once my foster mother.

I don’t care that you think fucking me is wrong.

You are a woman, and I am a man. That’s it. Anything else is just filler.

I let his words comfort me. Let myself believe that they’re true.

Because they are… To him, at least. He says these things with so much authority that I’m beginning to believe them too.

“What um…” At least thirty seconds have passed, and I still don’t know what I want to ask. I shrug. “What’s something you’ve never told anyone?”

He looks up like he’s thinking about it. He doesn’t look like someone about to expose all of his secrets. He looks like someone with nothing to hide.

I pretend that doesn’t bother me.

“I think Nikita has innocent people killed just because it amuses him.”

I nod and try not to show my disappointment too much. “Oh.”

“Why did you become an engineer?” He picks up his wine glass and stares inside it like it’s more interesting than this conversation.

I love my job. I’m fairly passionate about my job. Designs are like paintings to me. Physics has always been my favorite subject.

But right now? I don’t give a shit.

“It’s good money,” I lie. I do okay, but I’d make more if I’d gone to law school like my adoptive father begged.

Gwen and Arthur were so desperate to have a child, but I was still never my adoptive father’s blood.

He couldn’t see himself when he looked at me, so he settled for trying to turn me into him.

I tuck hair behind my ear. “You know, your answer was sort of a fact about Nikita. Not about yourself.”

His eyes narrow like he’s confused by that. “You just said to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Right, but…” I bring my thumb to my mouth to chew on the nail, looking toward the back door.

“You mean something personal?” he asks. I don’t for one second believe he didn’t already know that.

But I don’t call him out on it. I just nod.

He rubs his chin, faking contemplation. I can see it in his eyes now. See the armor he wears, the doors he just reinforced.

He isn’t telling me shit.

“I think you pretty much know everything,” he says. “I grew up in the system, then I was homeless, then I joined the Bratva.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you join the Bratva? Did they recruit you?”

As if they just walk around picking up homeless kids.

Or maybe they do. I don’t know.

He tips his head side-to-side. “Yeah, something like that.”

“ Something like that?”

Could you be any more vague? I want to ask but bite my tongue. I can tell I’m already beginning to sound flustered. Desperate. Maybe even angry.

How could he not have one thing to share with me? After everything I’ve shared with him…

He lifts a hand in a dismissive wave. “You don’t want to know the details, Margot. Trust me.”

“Then what do I want to know, Arseni?” My arms slowly cross over my chest. “I watched you kill a man right in front of me. He puked up blood on my stomach. What is it you think I can’t handle?”

“Why are you pushing this?” he asks, tension winding into his tone as well.

“Because … ” My voice holds emotion. I’ve just begun and already I can tell I’m going to lose it on him. “You know everything about me. Every real thing about me, things that I never dreamed of telling anyone. How do you think that makes me feel? I’m fucking naked here.”

“Oh my God.” He leans forward to cradle his forehead like an asshole. Like I’m demanding, dramatic, maybe even crazy.

“Am I seriously asking too much?” I huff, but it’s weak. I feel gassed when all I’ve been doing is sitting here.

“Showing me the type of porn you’re into isn’t bearing your soul to me, Margot. I find your little fetish adorable. I’m a bit more complicated.”

My cheeks burn as I turn away, my tongue feeling thicker.

Little fetish. Adorable.

I’m just cute to him. Like a little puppy he’s just taught to roll over.

My secrets mean nothing. My shame means nothing.

Throwing my napkin on my plate, I stand and start toward the back door. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, his bedroom or the basement.

The basement. I settle on it as I step inside.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” Arseni stomps behind me.

“I don’t want anything from you,” I snipe back, walking faster toward the basement.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“My chamber, Daddy. Let me know when you’re ready to torture me again.”

“Margot.”

No .

When my lip starts to tremble, I nearly break out into a run, only stopping when Arseni pulls me back by my arm and pins me to the wall.

“ Stop .” His command is fierce, but his face quickly softens. The vulnerability that shines in his eyes makes me hesitant to break away. To find sanctuary in a prison just so I won’t have to face him.

When I speak, my voice is a soft whisper. “What did you want from me tonight, Arseni? Did you want me to gush because you lit a candle and made me dinner?”

He blinks, his mouth opening. “I just wanted you to know I cared about you…”

“But you don’t .” I shake my head, my cheeks pinching.

“You like having sex with me. You like making fun of me. What you feel is lust, and maybe that’ll be enough for you to let me go, but it isn’t enough for you to care about me in the way that I need.

So please, just leave me alone. Unless you’re going to set me free, I don’t want to talk to you again.

And if you aren’t… Well, good. I’d rather be dead than face the world anyway because what’s adorable or frivolous to you haunts my goddamn soul, and if you can’t understand that, then you don’t understand me. And you never will.”

His arm weakly falls when I break away from him, standing taller while still somehow feeling shorter as I retreat.

I don’t know if I meant everything I said. If I’d rather be dead than face the world.

Yes. I think yes. But maybe no.

I don’t want to die. It’s just so hard to live with myself.

“I used to have sex for money.”

I stop at the sound of his voice and listen to his steps approaching.